thinking about questions of authority, technology, learning, and 2.0 in academic libraries

An interesting day

Today was an oddly librarianly day. Which is to say, that most of my days don’t look like I’m a librarian, I could be any manager. Like, yesterday I had a meeting about personnel issues, a meeting with my boss, and 3 hours of reference work. And I checked email and managed a to-do list. Could have been any job

Today though. today I felt like a librarian, and a manager. I had a meeting about faculty status and collegial behavior,

a meeting wherein the webguy & I may have found a way for me to build the flash-heavy website I (flash skills free…) want while also meeting accessibility needs.

I attended a TED Talk my committee hosted at the library school, and had lovely conversation about choices, and the differences between network design and hierarchy in organizational design. The Talk met the committee goals of drawing in students, faculty and staff from a wide range of departments, and was so well attended I thought the room had been double-booked!

I worked 1 hour on the reference desk, and answered a whole lot of actual reference questions. Two in particular: a class of 100 Chicago 7th graders wanted to see the library. (They stood in front of me while they asked this. ) And one of our students asked me to pull this month’s issue of Vanity Fair because it included an indecent photo, a nude of Marilyn Monroe.

An informatics minor interviewed me for his library school application. His initial contact to me came over Twitter :)

I wrote a very dense version of my vision for the Learning Commons here and sent it off to my Dean. It’s wonderfully management-ese, but still says what i want it to say. And pulling it out of management-ese would be a fantastic article!

Had an IM discussion about my Library’s crime rash, which has finally made the local news. Trust is really an important part of running a library, but you don’t realize that until it’s broken,

there was very little email today, but most of it was action oriented — I added 6 meetings to my next week

Is it weird that a day like this makes me feel more like a librarian than yesterday did?

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about.me

Uniquely Rudy. rudibrarian most places.

Innovator, gadget gal, devourer of speculative fiction and bluegrass, vegetarian, insatiably curious, left of left, privacy advocate, fighting for the rights of all, building community, Voracious user of Zotero and PInterest. Apparently becoming a curator of all things?